Tim
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EL = Electroluminescent lighting. The same backlighting technology in your watches, among other places you'd never think. I tried a few different types from various vendors, eBay, etc. Ended up working with Ellumiglow.com, with a couple of their parallel panels. These panels are the ones that work best for cutting to size and cutting out holes in. Obviously it ain't cheap. I used probably 7 or so medium and small sized panels.

You also have to watch, to a degree, the interference from whatever EL power inverter you use - same basic idea as with LED nav/strobe/landing lights. Again, Ellumiglow led the pack here, IMO.

Otherwise, the panels themselves are about as thick as a laminated piece of paper, so they're still somewhat flexible. Ellumiglow's are white, so I layered on a static-stick piece of light blue transparent vinyl sheeting off of eBay. The placards were done by AircraftEngravers.net.

I thank / blame Ed Kranz's RV-10 panel lighting for the inspiration. I wanted to duplicate his lighting, but improve on his quip that only the label words are backlit, due to using discrete LEDs in his design.

Bill
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Thanks! Already got a Garmin Elite with prop filter a few years back. It's charging now for the trip. I've got some test video from my cousin and me doing practice approaches around Cincy in his 182 a year or so back. Needless to say, I'm holding onto it as blackmail material. Neither of us were on our game that day.

I was holding off the front top deck to enable the avionics installation. Now that the avionics are in, and everything is working, I am going to put the front deck on, finish the windscreen and canopy, and then on to the engine.

This thing is starting to get very exciting!

Based on current progress, I plan to have the 9A out of the garage, at the hangar for final assembly in the fall. I am in the DC Metro Area. Hangars are expensive and hard to get. I have been on waiting lists for 3 years. The hanger is 40 minutes away, so I am kind of dreading the time when the project leaves the nest.

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